Internazionale Comunista di Debaser

In those days, the white trams that came down from the villages of Brianza were overflowing with passengers at Piazzale Loreto. The trams were stopped by the Black Brigades, and the workers were forced to disembark and file past that poor heap of corpses, watched closely by fascists armed to the teeth, ready to arrest anyone who dared to protest or even show an act of pity.

Within an hour, the tale of the massacre and the grim faces of the guards watching over the corpses spread throughout all the factories and the city. Anyone with a relative, friend, or comrade arrested or in hiding rushed over, their hearts in their throats, praying not to find them in the pile.

“A disorganized shooting occurred – will write the head of the Province Piero Parini – The unfortunate individuals had somewhat scattered in a desperate attempt to escape and therefore were hit in all parts of the body.” Eraldo Soncini, despite being wounded, manages to escape and take refuge in the building at via Palestrina 9, where he is reached and killed by the republicans' militias.

The Nazi officer overseeing the execution of the order, obedient to Saevecke's directives, decrees that the mutilated bodies remain exposed for the entire day.

The corpses, after a vigorous intervention by Cardinal Schuster, will be removed only in the afternoon.

With these executions, it was believed that this strategy of terror targeting innocents, the civilian population, could isolate the fighters of the Resistance. However, the massacre in piazzale Loreto had the opposite effect.

The execution order for Saevecke, sentenced to life imprisonment for that heinous crime by the military court of Turin on June 9, 1999, is carried out by the Muti firing squad, which begins at 5:45 in the morning on August 10, 1944, and concludes at 6:10. At 5:45, there is already a German officer in piazzale Loreto, escorted by four soldiers. The officer orders the hostages to be placed against a fence, and, with the Muti soldiers arranged in a semicircle, he immediately commands fire.

A climb of terror, then. In those days, "La Fabbrica" – the clandestine newspaper of the Italian Communist Party – called on the people of Milan to prepare for insurrection. These were days when it seemed that the war was coming to an end; all fronts were in motion, the Soviet army was advancing from the east, and the Anglo-American forces were pushing forward in France. It seemed that the war was approaching its conclusion, and the Nazis feared one thing above all: that in occupied Italy, the advance of the Allies would be accompanied by the insurrection of the people. They had the experience of Florence before them, where the insurrection had made the retreat of the German army heavy and difficult. The Germans wanted to have their backs covered and prevent the development of an insurrectionary movement that could jeopardize the retreat of the army pursued by the Allies.

The massacre occurs a few days after a mysterious attack on a German truck parked at 77 Viale Abruzzi. The attack, in which no German soldiers are killed, does not align, due to the demonstrated ineptitude, with the modus operandi of the 3rd GAP led by Giovanni Pesce. Therefore, it cannot be attributed to the nonetheless reprehensible category of reprisal. The massacre at Piazzale Loreto instead falls within a logic and a heinous design. The slaughter comes at the conclusion of a month during which executions at the hands of the republicans have followed one after the other; on July 15, 1944, three railway workers are shot in Greco, on July 31, 1944, five partisans are executed at Forlanini, on July 21, 1944, five patriots are killed in Robecco and 58 inhabitants are deported, of whom nine will not return from Germany. On August 28, 1944, in Milan, in Via Tibaldi, the mutineers execute another four partisans.

Today in 1944:
Milan, August 10, 1944....
The massacre at Piazzale Loreto

On August 10, 1944, a platoon of the Muti Legion, commanded by Captain Pasquale Cardella, executed fifteen partisans selected from the prisoners in the German section of the Milanese prison of San Vittore. They are: Antonio Bravin, Giulio Casiraghi, Renzo Del Riccio, Andrea Esposito, Domenico Fiorani, Umberto Fogagnolo, Giovanni Galimberti, Vittorio Gasparini, Emidio Mastrodomenico, Angelo Poletti, Salvatore Principato, Andrea Ragni, Eraldo Soncini, Libero Temolo, Vitale Vertemati. The order was given by the commander of German security, Gestapo Captain Theodor Saevecke, and relayed, for the operational part, to Colonel Pollini of the Republican National Guard.

At the moment of taking the fifteen to the execution site at 4:30 in the morning, they were given work overalls to make it seem as if they were being transferred to work for Todt. In the prison's register, there is indeed the note “Departed for Bergamo”.

At that time, Piazzale Loreto was the convergence point for commuters from Milan heading to the factories in Brianza and for those from the provinces towards Milan; thus, the Nazis chose it because they wanted to send a harsh warning to the population and the Resistance: as many people as possible had to see and know. The massacre at Piazzale Loreto was carried out with cynically calculated choices: for the location: during peak hours on working days, the flow of commuters reached several tens of thousands of workers; for the timing: the beginning of the workday; and finally, for the victims who were not chosen randomly. Among the fifteen, the entire spectrum of forces involved in the Resistance is represented: actionists, socialists, communists, and Catholics.

Libero Temolo from Pirelli, Umberto Fogagnolo and Giulio Casiraghi from Ercole Marelli, Angelo Poletti from Isotta Fraschini are the organizers of the strikes in March 1943 and 1944. Vittorio Gasparini, a Catholic activist first in youth organizations and then in Fuci, collaborates with the secret services of the American Fifth Army command, managing a clandestine radio center in Piazza Fiume (now Piazza della Repubblica). Domenico Fiorani collects funding directly from Enrico Falck that he brings to the partisan groups located in the mountains. Eraldo Soncini collaborates with Colonel Carlo Croce in October 1943 on San Martino above Varese, to organize the first act of armed resistance against Nazifascism. Salvatore Principato has been opposing fascism since its origins, first working with Turati and Anna Kuliscioff, then with the Rosselli brothers.

The fifteen martyrs of Piazzale Loreto are the soul of a Milan that, in opposing fascism, hopes for freedom and democracy.

This massacre occurs a few days after a mysterious attack on a German truck parked at Viale Abruzzi 77. The attack, in which no soldier is killed...

"I am an entrepreneur and in August I will be traveling for a month with my family. I would like to know if I can bring 15,000 euros in my suitcase, to pay for the hotel and the costs of renting a sailboat. I would also like to buy a luxury watch to gift to my wife. Before departure, can I withdraw all the cash I need from my bank account at once, or is it better to split the withdrawals? Additionally, if I make a stop abroad during the trip, how should I behave?
F. G. – Rome"

Published yesterday in the "Quotidiano del Fisco" of Il Sole 24 Ore

Pills of OUR history (12). Let go of any form of victimhood, and for this time, no jests: to remember this day when Carlo Giuliani was killed, we must not forget that the term "boy" has been and still is a blatant misrepresentation. I do not know exactly what Carlo thought, and I care little, but I KNOW that he was not just a boy. I know that with his death, the abuses and tortures at the G8 in Genoa stifled, as usual, a movement that, despite all its contradictions, was growing and genuinely scaring someone. I don’t even want to talk about how many key figures from those years have recycled themselves. Carlo fought and was killed: that is what should concern (us). There is little to shout about infiltrators, black blocs, and violent acts against the peaceful march, to which Carlo belonged, as always claimed by those who want to justify his act of rebellion (even through documentaries, as if there was a need to justify it). Since that day, there has been no limit to the worst of cowardice, infamy, and heavy-handedness in the struggle. Today, instead of collecting his fire extinguisher, all we do is mourn his death, the death of "a boy": a word that does not represent anything of what his act stood for those days. I was not him and I do not know what he would think about the events that transpired if he were alive, but knowing that the revolution is not made with a fire extinguisher, I believe we owe him something more. Carlo was our companion because that is how he lived his last moments. Not all boys have carried on a struggle like he did to its extreme consequences, and in these days of deceptive, relative social peace in which we are entangled, this is more evident than ever.